Anyone know if "Bank Switching" is still necessary with the enhanced 16F chips?

I'm looking into the 16F1824 which is a nice replacement for the 16F688 chip.

http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?dDocName=en546901

 

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I use them. Bank switching is still necessary, and honestly a big headache when you have 16+ banks.

 

Why not just move to the 18F and C? No bank switching. Much easier.

 

Why not just move to the 18F and C? No bank switching. Much easier.

The circuit board has already been designed for the 16F688 14 pin chip. The 16F1824 is the enhanced version of that chip.

It will be nice to have on-board PWM as well as other features with the 16F1824.

 

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Have you check the pinout to see if you can plug in a 18f? You may be able to find an 18f with the same pinout that would work on that board.

Yeah, I don't believe they make any 18F chips in a 14 pin. The smallest chip has 18 pins on it.

 

I'm reading up on the 18F pics right now. Bank switching was a minimal annoyance when I was playing with PICS with 3 or 4 banks, but, trust me dude, it is a royal pain the in butt on these enhanced midrange PICs despite being pretty cool in the bells and whistle department. I was porting some code over from a 16F818 to a 16F1934 and I found myself constantly having do give banking commands. It was driving my up the wall moving a stored value to W, bank selecting the SPI buffer, moving W to SSPBUF, bank selecting the PIR rigester, testing the flag, bank selecting the SPI buffer, moving SSPBUF to W, bank selecting the user file, and then storing it in the user file. It makes programming no fun, honestly.

This is as opposed to the 18F where I could just MOVFF USERFILE1,SSPBUF , then test the flag, then do MOVFF SSPBUF, USERFILE2 ....or that's what I have understood so far from reading the 18F1220 datasheet.

 

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The enhanced add some peripherals, and make them as compiler friendly as possible without breaking the basic concept. There are many C compilers out now that produce code that is better than most people end up writing in assembly (unless you are in the top 20% of assembly code authors).

There is a bit of overhead when dealing with larger number manipulation, but it is done very efficiently. Compiled languages let you get what you want going quickly, rather than spending many hours trying to figure out a trick.

Bytes count on mass production items, where every last bit is used to save 9 cents per copy. Most commercially programmed PIC boards, such as interfaces, controllers, etc, wouldn't even hit the evaluation limit code size of the nicer compilers. (Though if you are selling that many, you should be buying the top of the line compiler.)

In short, if you only work with assembly, don't get into the advanced cores, unless you like a needless challenge.

 

The BANKs aren't that big of an issue, they just take up too much Program Space. The real killer is crossing the 2k Word boundary and having to deal with PCLATH - yuk!

I still like the 16F series for smaller projects.

 

Then I'm just gonna abandon the P10,P12,P16 chips all together.

I like the 10Fs at the moment, they don't have banks because they don't have enough RAM. No pages or interrupts either.
I think they are perfect for beginners, for small projects, and as helper chips for bigger projects.

 

I like the 10Fs at the moment, they don't have banks because they don't have enough RAM. No pages or interrupts either.
I think they are perfect for beginners, for small projects, and as helper chips for bigger projects.

Im playing with them too.. I picked up a handfu--palmfu---shotglass full-

I picked up four 10f204 to play with.

nice little chip. Has a capacitive touch input pin, comparator, built-in 4mhz osc.. and a timer.. And thats about it

I am liking them alot. GOod for 555 "replacement" type applications with more accuracy.